Global vs. Local Heating in Magnetic Nanoparticle Hyperthermia

Abstract

This thesis studies how the efficacy and safety of magnetic nanoparticle hyperthermia (MNH) are affected by variations in local (individual particle level) heat caused by polydispersity in size and anisotropy and the link between local and global (entire system) heat. This is done by using a Metropolis Monte Carlo computational technique. MNH is a new medical technique whose aim is to destroy cancer cells, which is achieved by introducing magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) into the tumor and heating them up to 45ºC by applying an alternating magnetic field. The motivation for this thesis arises from two sets of experiments: ones reporting cell death without having a global macroscopic temperature variation and others showing huge temperature gradients in the particle surface rapidly vanishing from it a few nanometers away. These observations go against some commonly presumed ideas about efficacy conditions in MNH and suggest the relevance of investigating local heat.